Why did the HESH explode before it hit?

[F.T]

[Jartsev]

It is not quite obvious,  but impact was short of target ant shell  was detonated by hitting the ground.

[Ssnake]

Yes, for technical reasons we can't use exact elevation zero, but so low to the ground there could always be something triggering the fuze.

[ChrisWerb]

I raised the fact that HESH/HEP explodes on bushes, small trees etc. a year ago. IIRC Ssnake said it obviously wasn't the correct behaviour, but was essentially how fuzing works in the game at present. I inferred that might change at some point, as priorities permitted. Bearing mind that HESH is ever less a thing in the real world, I'm not going to hold my breath or let a niggle like this spoil my enjoyment of the simulation.

[F.T]

25 minutes ago, ChrisWerb said:

I raised the fact that HESH/HEP explodes on bushes, small trees etc. a year ago. IIRC Ssnake said it obviously wasn't the correct behaviour, but was essentially how fuzing works in the game at present. I inferred that might change at some point, as priorities permitted. Bearing mind that HESH is ever less a thing in the real world, I'm not going to hold my breath or let a niggle like this spoil my enjoyment of the simulation.

Yeah, I noticed that, too. But I didn't get into the simulation until a while ago

[Ssnake]

With a tip-mounted piezo-electric fuze our current behavior with bushes is correct, and the example in this thread is "not obviously incorrect". But then, HESH hitting dirt is a pretty messy thing in real life. By nature, HESH wants to slam vertically into a thick metal surface. The ground however is anything but - irregular shape, inhomogeneous hardness and density, a very shallow impact angle - so the HE/paraffin filler mix will often rupture into several slabs that might burn rather than explode (or partially explode, or not even burn at all). Clearly, this is an outright edge case even in the best of circumstances.

[ChrisWerb]

SSnake, I said you said (in a previous discussion) that HESH exploding on relatively light vegetation was obviously an incorrect behaviour. I did not claim the example given in this thread  was incorrect (obviously or otherwise) or dispute your response to it. I remember you explaining that the ground level in the game was a kind of abstraction where you had to take it as read that undulations etc. were present for the purposes of cover and concealment even if you could not actually see them. Another case of "squint harder"

[Ssnake]

I didn't mean to put words in your mouth, just trying to emphasize/clarify for other readers that with regular HE munition our current behavior of foliage triggering premature detonation is actually fine.